Arena Stage was an early leader in the resident theater movement. One of the first not-for-profit theaters in the United States as well as a pioneer of the regional theater movement the Arena Stage was the first regional theater to transfer a production to Broadway, the first invited by the U.S. State Department to tour behind the Iron Curtain and the first to receive a Tony Award. Co-founded in 1950 by Edward Mangum a teacher from the George Washington University, and Zelda Fichandler one of his students, Arena Stage was opened in Washington D.C. to fill the void left by the closing of the National Theater in 1948. Deriving it's name from the idea of "theater in the round," Arena Stage became one of the first resident theaters in the United States, beginning with a company of only eight actors. Today, Arena performs to over 250,000 patrons during a September to June season and employs nearly 200 theater professionals and craftpersons, who are responsible for all the costumes and scenery seen on stage. Many now- famous actors took part in Arena Stage productions during the early part of their careers. Some of them include Robert Prosky, Morgan Freeman, Dianne Weist, James Earl Jones, Kevin Kline, Christopher Guest, Yeardly Smith and Samuel L. Jackson. Donated to George Mason University in fall of 2000, the Arena Stage Collection contains materials spanning the theater's 50 year history including production notebooks, photographs, playbills, scrapbooks, scripts and handwritten correspondence and other production materials.
From the guide to the Thomas C. Fichandler papers, 1950-1997, (George Mason University. Special Collections and Archives.)
